Mark Ermler, 69, who in recent years served as musical director of Russia's Bolshoi Theater and conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, died Sunday in Seoul of kidney failure. Born in Leningrad, Ermler debuted as a symphonic conductor with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in 1952, when he was only 20. He joined the Bolshoi Theater in 1956, and conducted more than 2,000 performances in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan.

Despite the lightheadedness that caused Van Cliburn to interrupt his concert Monday night at the Hollywood Bowl, a spokeswoman for the pianist said Tuesday that he is in good health and will continue his 16-city United States tour with the Moscow Philharmonic as planned. Cliburn's Los Angeles performance was the first official appearance on a comeback tour after going into retirement in 1978. The pianist also performed in a preview concert Saturday in San Diego.

April 9, 1992 | CHRIS PASLES, Chris Pasles covers music and dance for The Times Orange County Edition.

Tchaikovsky's music is so melodious and so popular today that we can scarcely imagine why so much of it was panned when it was new. Consider the Violin Concerto in D, which 17-year-old Maxim Vengerov will play with the Moscow Philharmonic led by Jasug Kakhidze Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Tchaikovsky offered the dedication of the concerto to the great Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer, who went on to found a dynasty of stellar Russian violinists.

Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya, have had their Soviet citizenship restored to them 12 years after the government took it away, Tass said today. The Soviet legislature gave them back their citizenship and nullified the decree that had stripped them of their medals and honorary titles, the official news agency said.

Despite the massive political upheaval this week in the Soviet Union, the appearances of two Soviet orchestras scheduled to perform in Orange County do not seem to be in jeopardy, according to New York representatives of the groups and the Orange County Philharmonic Society, which is sponsoring their performances. The Moscow Virtuosi, scheduled for Oct.

Pianist Bella Davidovich and her son, violinist Dmitri Sitkovsetsky, will be the first Soviet emigre musicians returning to the Soviet Union to play at the invitation of government officials, Davidovich's manager, Kevin Hassler, said in New York on Monday. Davidovich and Sitkovsetsky were invited by the Soviet state concert agency Goskoncert to play two concerts in December in memory of Davidovich's husband, Julian Sitkovsetsky, who died of cancer in 1958 at age 32.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the glasnost players without a score card. Here's a list of who currently represents whom and where you might see upcoming performances. ICM Artists Ltd.: --Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra with Yuri Temirkanov, music director. Southland performances in November. (Note: Temirkanov, who is with Entertainment Corp., U.S.A., conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony -- the powerful single work on the Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts over the weekend -- comes with lots of extraneous weight. Composed largely (the first three movements) during the Nazi siege of that city, the symphony was first hailed in the West as an expression of stirring defiance from a worthy ally. After the Cold War set in, it began to be regarded as a piece of Soviet bombast and claptrap, and the composer as a mouthpiece for a repressive regime.